Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/359

 "Why?" she asked.

"They’re helpless in there .... they've no ammunition!"

She compelled herself to calmness again.

"But surely they’ll know .... surely .... in time," she murmured.

"Yes, they'll know!" he answered, absently, for his squinting eyes were on the undulating sweep of open ground ahead of him. He could see little barefooted men in ragged denim uniforms, creeping and running from hollow to hollow, spreading out in an irregular line, like the fan-edge of a breaking side-swell.

"They're coming ... keep low!" he said. And as he spoke he sighted and fired.

The response to that first fire of his was prompt, almost instantaneous. It brought a steady crescendo clatter of sound and a patter and throb of bullets against the pit—front.

McKinnon swung the emptied rifle back into the hands of the waiting girl and caught up its mate, with one movement of his body.

He was firing calmly and deliberately now, watching for each upthrust shoulder and advancing head as it rose above the dip of the creek-bottom.

Then the heads began to show thicker and faster, and it left him no time for deliberation. He pumped the lever and fired until his arms